You are here: Home » Adult Webmaster News » For Valentine's Day, Indianapolis' Last...
Select year   and month 
 
February 13, 2014

For Valentine's Day, Indianapolis' Last Porn Theater Remembered

INDIANAPOLIS, IN—Valentine's Day will always be a whistfully sad occasion for Chuck Chulchian, according to an article on the Indiana Star's website. It was on that date 22 years ago that Chulchian was forced to close his Rivoli Theatre for good after the final frame of its final film moved past the projector's sprockets—all thanks to the Indiana Indecent Nuisance Act of 1983, the local chapter of the Moral Majority, aided by Women Against Pornography honcho (honchess?), the late Andrea Dworkin—and Chulchian's tenant, Tim Harmon, who ran the Forest Flower Coffee House in the same building that housed the theater, who was one of the first to mount a protest against the theater's porn fare before being joined by the others. (He also provided free coffee and donuts to the picketers.) Chulchian bought the theater at 3155 E. Tenth Street, which had been built in the 1920s, in either 1975 or '76, and began round-the-clock showings of gay porn films, though at some point, he switched over to hetero XXX and cut the theater's hours of operation back to 15 on weekdays, 18 on weekends. That might in part have been because Chulchian himself ran the projector, and wanted to spend more time with his wife and three kids. Now, at 82, he's on his third wife—and about a dozen adopted stray cats. To be fair, the Rivoli also was a venue for rock concerts in its day, but it was the porn that paid the bills—until December 27, 1991, when he signed a deal with the city to close the theater in exchange for prosecutors dropping "nuisance" charges under the 1983 law—and after all, the theater was across the street from the Brookside Elementary School, which didn't make the neighbors too happy. In fact, by the time Chulchian closed the Rivoli, more than 50 adult businesses in Marion County—theaters, bookstores and massage parlors—had been shut down under that same law, essentially creating a citywide "zone-out" of such businesses. The Rivoli was essentially abandoned after Chulchian closed it, though in 2007, he gave the building to the non-profit Rivoli Center for the Performing Arts, while retaining a small interest in it—and in June 2012, he finally gave his approval for the Center to begin renovations on the building, which is currently best described as "dilapidated." But Chulchian still has his memories of the old place—and every Valentine's Day, they come flooding back. It's a feeling no box of chocolates will fix.

 
home | register | log in | add URL | add premium URL | forums | news | advertising | contact | sitemap
copyright © 1998 - 2009 Adult Webmasters Association. All rights reserved.